Our dog has attacked three people. When the instructor in the obedience class tried to force him into a DOWN position last night he attacked her too. What should we do?

Question

I have a two year old mix -German shepard - terrier (we think) he was rescued from a garage at the age of about 3 months. We was somewhat malnourished, but was very friendly. My problem with this dog is aggression. He has attacked three times. First was by a friend who took his treasured stick from him. The friend was told not to take anything from this dog. Second was another friend who took a piece of pizza from the dog. He also was told not to. I have been working with a training school that trains police canines. I do have faith in these trainers. He has only been in school one month. (We tried another training class that used halties, I wasn't impressed). Last night was my first time with the dog in class. (He has been going everyday to work with a trainer first.) They have had no problems with aggression, in fact they were very impressed by his intelligence. Last night in class he was doing every command great! He decided he was not going to do a down command. The trainer came over to correct him more harshly, she did and he attacked. After the attack she had me correct him harshly and he did go into the command and was again great for the rest of the class. This dog is very friendly except that he is possessive and will attack if he feels threatened. He does well with other dogs and lets anyone into the house and is very friendly with strangers and children. He was severely attacked by two rottweilers about 9 months ago. We were walking and they came out of nowhere. I love this dog and will do anything to solve this problem. The vet suggested prozac, it was his first day on the med and he was somewhat out of it at class. At first the trainer did not want him on it but does suggest keeping him on it after seeing the attack. Would you please give me your opinion?

Accepted Answer

You are surrounded by incompetent people.

I always tell people who have similar situations that your problem reminds me “Everyone has an opinion on how to train your dog – just ask your mailman – the problem is that very few people have the experience to back up their opinions which results in a lot of bad information being handed out.”

This obedience trainer needs more training. She did not recognize the dominance problems with this dog. No one should take a dominant dog away from the handler and try and force it into a DOWN position. You found out why last night. The DOWN command is the last command to train a dominant dog - I like training it motivationally. I don’t have time to
go into how this is done in this email.

I suggest that you begin by reading the article I wrote titled Dealing with the Dominant Dog. You can find the articles (and Q&A sections related to this) on my web site in the list of training articles.

Train this dog with a prong collar. Do the training yourself at home. Get my Basic Dog Obedience video and do this yourself. Read the description of this video.

You need to have a dog crate in your house. These dog bites would not have happened had you been using a dog crate. No one should be around this dog - when people come over the dog goes into a crate.

You also need to read what I have written about dog fights. This dog is going to be dog aggressive (it's only a matter of time). Once a dog is attacked it will always be dog aggressive. You may not see it right away but it is there. Read the article on how to break up a dog fight without getting bit.

Halties are not training tools for anything but the softest meekest of dogs.